Since we are Ubuntu based I thought I would post how Jaunty is progressing. The boot time is extremely fast! This is by far the fastest booting Ubuntu system I have ever tested and without tweaking a single thing! Ubuntu introduced a new usplash, the progress bar is thin and changes color as it progresses, the logo is much smaller and not in your face huge like it has been. I mention the usplash because it is the best one I have ever seen and I never would have expected this from Ubuntu.

All of the applications are current and load quick. Memory use is better than the last two releases! Jaunty's memory usage is better out of the box than the last two releases fully tweaked! Jaunty's default look has improved drastically! The new default wallpaper is on par with OpenSuse, it's still brown but it actually looks good! Even the alternate wallpaper looks nice this time, no rabbit with antlers!

The new GDM theme has received some refinements too, it does not match everything else in my opinion but it is a huge improvement.I noticed little refinements to the OpenOffice splash screen and some of the icons. The progress bar in the OpenOffice splash is properly placed and the icons seem more defined. I could never figure out the OpenOffice icons before, now I can easily tell what they represent.

I have noticed problem with flash in full screen, lags and is very choppy. Flash works fine as long as it is not maximized. This is still in beta so I would expect this to be fixed in the future. Playing DVD movies is a bit of a struggle too at this time, they will play but need some coaxing to start by moving the slider forward. Again, this is a beta and I would guess these problems will go away with some updates to various libs.

Edit: I forgot to mention that Synaptic now has previews so you can see what an application looks like.

Evolution is working without crashing but the "Preferences" window turns huge and you can not access the bottom portion of it. The settings work and stick this time but there is still work to be done.

All in all this promises to be the best base we have seen in a log time.

If you use the KDE CE or the Xfce CE you can test Kubuntu and Xubuntu and help improve things for the next release. Ubuntu does provide the majority of the packages we use, so it is only right that we roll up our sleeves and help.

Last edited by exploder on Sat Mar 21, 2009 1:00 pm, edited 2 times in total.

exploder wrote:All in all this promises to be the best base we have seen in a long time.

A quick 9.04 beta impression: I tried the Jaunty live cd this morning. (Dell PentD 2.8, 2gig RAM, SamsungWS) All hardware, including screen resolution, and network worked without hiccups. Think the "computer janitor" addition will be popular. Gnome 2.26. OpenOffice 3.01 Boot and shutdown very fast. Still brown, kinda like the default "ripples". At least no lapin avec antlers!Had no issues and I'm looking forward to the release in about a month.

Hmmmmmmm.... I've found that I can't install the Beta in Virtuabox in Windows or Mint. And on the live CD the audio playback is choppy for me and this is the first time this is happened to me in the last 3 years.

I have found the Intel drivers to be lacking in Jaunty. Flash is choppy in full screen and nearly cripples Firefox. If not fixed, this would be a show stopper for me because I watch a lot of shows on Fancast. I also can not get pod casts to stream right with Totem, the only information I seem to get is that Totem is buggy in this release...MPlayer might be a solution to the issue with pod casts.

I like what they did with the artwork, it actually looks nice for a change. Boot speed is very good and the new usplash is one of the best I have ever seen. Ubuntu wants people to use apport to report bugs and last I knew it didn't work worth a crap. The Developer's seem unconcerned with graphics card issues in Jaunty, this is a major concern to me. I like the "latest, greatest", but seriously, what good is it when multimedia playback works poorly?

Problem with Jaunty and video seems to be entirely to do with adoption of Xorg 1.6 and everything that implies. So what we have is the bigger distros, like Ubuntu, pushing driver and kernel module development to support Xorg and ultimately to support KDE4.

I'm confident there will be a teeth-gnashing phase with Jaunty adoption that probably won't START to settle out until Karmic and then should stabilize in time for the 10.04 LTS release.

Thus, I'm personally on an upgrade cycle based around Ubuntu's LTS releases and not looking to do a lot of serious upgrading until 10.04 although at least my personal laptop will ride a lot more of the "edge" until then.

My old workhorse laptop at home got Jaunty-x64 w/ ext4 on the test partition last night. Boots in 20sec. Everything zippy fast. Got media codecs up first thing and flash plays just fine even with compiz. I knew this was coming so I wasn't surprised when there is no longer a restricted kernel module for the old ATI chipset and I get dumped back to using the radeonfb kernel module. Which means suspend is now broken again: known acpi problem with Radeon Mobility/Xpress and radeonfb (see other thread).